The problem comes from our idea of truth, says Seth Mnookin, author of the newly released The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear. Whoâ€™s easier to believe? Scientists and doctors you donâ€™t know, or your neighbor with the autistic son, who said his symptoms started right after a booster shot?

â€śWhen it comes to decisions around emotionally charged topics, logic often takes a back seat to what are called cognitive biases — essentially a set of unconscious mechanisms that convince us that it is our feelings about a situation and not the facts that represent the truth,â€ť Mnookin said in a recent essay in The Atlantic.

For his new book, he spent more than two years investigating the alleged link between vaccines and autism. As it became clear to him there was no such link, the book became a hard look at who decides whatâ€™s true, why we believe what we do, and why fear can trump logic.

Join us at noon Eastern Tuesday for a conversation between Mnookin and Reuters Health executive editor Ivan Oransky. Theyâ€™ll discuss these thorny issues, and youâ€™ll have a chance to ask questions.

From the U.S., call 1-888-339-2688. Outside of the U.S., call 1-671-847-3007. 1-617-847-3007. The passcode is 72962858.

It boils down to a matter of trust. Do you trust the doctors? The older I get the less I trust them. I see how data is manipulated, and how people come up with a conclusion and only look for the data that supports it. (Works both ways). Medical studies are skewed towards pharmaceuticals; researchers are skewed toward the ones paying for it. When the diagnosis is formed before 3 years of age, anything–genetic, environmental, pharmaceutical–can influence the development of the brain. The brain begins to form even before many would know they are carrying a child (think–baby/person/ as a child instead of a fetus/thing/).

Wanna have more trust issues? The CEO of Reuters is Thomas Glocer, who is on the board of Merck Pharmacuticals, who is the maker of MMR and many other vaccines. So why no mention of the documents that Wakefield has produced to exonerate himself?

Corporate Synergy!

KPBS in San Deigo’s investigation found that the pertussis outbreak is because the vaccine has become ineffective because the bacteria that causes it has mutated. http://www.kpbs.org/news/envision/whoopi ngcough/ As many as 83% of the pertussis cases in CA were vaccinated! But blame is being shifted from a failing vaccine to people who don’t use the failing vaccine? A vaccine that has one of the highest injury rates, a vaccine that HHS says causes lifelong seizure disorders, serious brain damage, loss of eye contact and social withdrawl, and a vaccine that HHS just ruled killed Elias Tembenis? I didn’t see Reuters carrying the news two weeks ago of that government ruling or see concern for his death.

Reuters is reporting that 10 children died of pertussis, but no mention of the more than thirty deaths associating with the pertussis vaccine?